With a certain measure of urgency, the big players anticipate the emergence of convergence.

“Major media companies are drawn and cocked,” noted Denver Post Chairman and Publisher William Dean Singleton during his State of the Industry speech at the Colorado Press Association’s convention in February.

Singleton, a vocal advocate for removal of federal regulations preventing cross-ownership of newspapers, television and radio stations in the same market, is also chief operating officer of MediaNews Group, the seventh-largest newspaper company in the United States.

The Federal Communication Commission review, forced by a 1996 telecommunications law that requires the agency to periodically consider decades-old media ownership regulation, is expected to be complete in May.

“I believe — and I believe this strongly — that the promise of media convergence, which is really what the information superhighway is all about, is real and it will change everything,” Singleton said in an October address at the Associated Press Managing Editors conference in Baltimore. “And when the antiquated barriers to ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations in the same market finally fall —and I believe they will in 2003 — and when consumers are finally wired with affordable high-speed access, which will happen, then things will accelerate rapidly,” he said.

“The possibilities for newspapers in that convergence are huge. Newspapers are the cornerstone of that convergence,” according to Singleton.

But Frank Blethen, publisher and chief executive officer of The Seattle Times Co., sees it differently.

“The current battleground in the war to save diversity is the FCC. Specifically, their push to repeal the newspaper and television cross-ownership ban,” noted Blethen at a symposium on the relevance of the family newspaper at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in September. “If the public loses this battle, and cross-ownership is repealed, it will be a major blow to the preservation of independent journalism.

“To those who suggest that independent and family newspapers and small chains are not viable economic entities and can’t compete or survive, I say hogwash.”

For the most part, newspapers, TV stations and radio stations are local businesses, which should be serving and responding to their local communities, not Wall Street, according to Blethen.

Singleton wouldn’t necessarily argue with the idea of keeping it local. It appears his vision includes a journalism world where local content is king and the newspaper’s greatest resource — the people who gather and package that news — is leveraged across the media spectrum.

“We can weave together different media to make our local connection more diverse and as a result stronger and broader than it has ever been,” Singleton said. “Over time we will be able to cover people’s needs from all angles, instant alerts by wireless, evolving updates on the Web, in-depth reporting and perspective in print.”

Pairing the newsgathering machines of newspapers, radio and TV with different methods of delivery might provide economies of scale and conceivably lead to a different breed of journalist.

At a Colorado Press Association campus visit to the University of Colorado at Boulder last fall, Fort Collins Coloradoan Executive Editor Michael Limon suggested that the day may come when print journalists might have to consider carrying a video camera, remote microphone, etc., because content that they develop is destined for multiple outlets and formats. The Coloradoan is owned by Gannett Co. Inc.

Many of us in the campus visiting group dismissed the idea as preposterous, but in review, I don’t think such an idea is out of the realm of possibilities.

In fact, such “backpack journalists” are already plying their trade on the international newsgathering front. It is not uncommon for freelance journalists to sell a story to several outlets. It also is not much of stretch that such journalists might conceivably shoot, edit their own footage, develop audio and package a print report and an Internet version — all from the frontlines of an emerging story.

Personally, I have thus far been unaffected by the urge to converge. I am also not yet ready to render a judgment on whether all this convergence talk is positive or negative, but one thing seems increasingly more likely — as journalists, we might all be carting around a lot more equipment in the near future.

Rob Carrigan specializes in prepress systems for weekly newspapers. He is the publisher of several ASP Westward LP weeklies in Colorado. He can be reached by e-mail at RCarrigan@aol.com or rcarrigan@ccnewspapers.com.